Uncertainty of the Man
by Fallowdoe
Summary: AU-- Spike is given what he needs in Africa, order to achieve his goals. He comes back changed.
1. Chapter One

Uncertainty of the Man  
  
---  
  
part one  
  
---  
  
The demon looked up at him with its unreadable face.  
  
"I will give you what you require in order to achieve your goals."  
  
The tent flap rustled in a strange wind, and he could smell the dryness of the air outside from where he knelt on the demon's oriental carpet. The harsh white sunlight beyond the entrance filled him with instinctual foreboding.  
  
The demon inclined its dark head, not featureless, but impossible to truly look at and perceive. The eyes simply slid off. The cloud that was its presence lifted suddenly, and then all things lifted, faded away. And they both were gone to what had come before.  
  
---  
  
He awoke in a cold stone place.  
  
He looked about him, confused. It was a crypt. He was among the dead.  
  
But these dead lived comfortably. Books lined a shelf on one wall. The floor was carpeted by many carpets. A bed stood in among some skulls lying randomly by the stairwell.  
  
He couldn't remember... how he got here, what had happened. It was silent and dark. And then a sound broke the darkness.  
  
The movement of a door.  
  
Footfalls came down the stairs and the dark haired man spoke again.  
  
"Spike, where did you come from?."  
  
Then a pause. A quizzical look.  
  
"Spike?"  
  
Xander had never seen Spike with the particular expression he bore. He stared at Xander like he was looking through him, and looked frightened. Frightened. Somehow, it raised a snake of fear in Xander, too.  
  
"We hadn't seen you in so long, figured you'd cleared out. Buffy's fighting a whole nest out there, I ran to get some of your weapons. For some reason, the beasties that bite have gotten... well, bitier since you left. Wanted to help. Never expected you to be here. Come on, we should go, she needs us."  
  
Spike cleared his throat.  
  
"Uhm... beasts?"  
  
"Ok, are you of the sober?" Xander asked. But he knew something was wrong. "We don't have time for this, Buffy's waiting."  
  
"Buffy?"  
  
"Yes, your doomed obsession, object of your harassment. Don't you remember?"  
  
"I am afraid... no, I can't." Spike whispered. He thought he could remember dying... once. And then there was an insufferably long, vague blur.  
  
"Great. You stay there, ok? I'll be back," Xander said, pulling a lightweight axe from one of Spike's weapons chests. He needed to help Buffy and he couldn't wait any longer. She needed him.  
  
---  
  
Buffy landed on her feet, running. She was trying to draw them somewhere she could take the offensive. One vampire tried to tackle her, but received a stake thrown behind her for a reward.  
  
She scaled a statue and vaulted herself around a memorial bench, behind which she pulled out her crossbow and took out three of them before she had to give up more ground.  
  
It was strange to fight this many and be so alone.  
  
Willow was gone, and her support with her. Anya, Tara, gone. Summer wasn't yet old, and the fight, the long struggle, had increased. Xander was brave, but she feared for him every time he appeared on her patrol routes. She thought he did it because he found a reason this way. Dawn was barely there at all, drifting through life alone and unreachable.  
  
She pulled away from the main group, arms encircling a branch, pulling herself up into a tree from which she had better range. Perched on a branch, she fended off those who would climb to her, and kept a good range from those who would follow after.  
  
The Slayer was taking up guerrilla tactics. There were too many. There was a time she'd have had even him with her-- strong and resourceful like herself.  
  
But not like herself, never like herself. And the quiet despair moved in her.  
  
But he had gone somewhere even before all this had happened. Gone away. And there was no one to watch her back.  
  
Six more of the vampires were dust below her at last, and the other three had fled. And then a movement in the bushes. She raised her bow, reaching to her quiver with lithe speed.  
  
"Hey!" said Xander. She didn't shoot.  
  
Buffy leapt gracefully to the ground, where she landed silently.  
  
"If they don't kill you, Xander, I might," she said, walking up to him, catching her breath.  
  
"Big words Buff, big words," he said, smiling a moment, shrugging. Buffy was looking behind him, where Spike stood by a tree, watching.  
  
"Oh, yeah. Spike's back. Now you'll have someone else to hit on you ineffectually," Xander's smile faded, and he continued, "Really Buffy, I'm not sure but there's something weird about him."  
  
Spike continued to stare at Buffy. She stared back, and stepped closer to him. She looked intently in his face. And then she knew.  
  
"No," said Buffy, "He's not back-- it's William."  
  
--- 


	2. Chapter Two

---  
  
part two  
  
---  
  
He was worn, she noticed. He had been somewhere harsh and dry. There was still sand under his fingernails. His hair was dark at the roots.  
  
He looked terrified as he sat on the floor of her dead mother's bedroom. She didn't know what to do with him. He didn't even know her. All he had whispered when she brought him here was something about everyone he knew being dead.  
  
"So what do we do with him?" Xander whispered to her, echoing her thoughts from the hallway, looking at where she watched him from the door.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Well, he can't camp out on your floor staring morosely into the wallpaper forever. Think we should find out what happened?"  
  
"I don't know how we'll find out..." she said dully. No Giles, no Willow. There was the prospect of breaking into the locked up Magic Box, going through the books. But she wasn't good at that. Isolated. No one was at her back any more.  
  
"And you're sure he's... well, William?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"How?"  
  
She looked at him sadly.  
  
"Because I know him."  
  
"What's going on?" asked Dawn.  
  
"Dawn, you should go back to bed--"  
  
"Spike?" she said, walking past her sister, her face lighting up, "I thought you'd gone away. . ."  
  
He looked back at the pretty child who smiled down at him. She reached her hand out towards him, and he touched it timidly. And yet he didn't speak. And that expression on his face, like he didn't know where he was. Her smile faded from her face and she crouched down in front of him.  
  
"Spike? You ok?"  
  
"Dawn," Buffy said softly, coming up to her and touching her shoulder, "Something's wrong."  
  
---  
  
Buffy broke the lock with a feeling of unfocused guilt, and opened the door to the Magic Box. It was nearly dawn, and she wasn't sure if Spike was still a vampire, or what had happened to him. They went immediately, because she'd tried to learn from past inaction. She didn't want to take chances, wanted to know what was happening. She gestured the way for them to enter, and quickly went to close all the blinds. Xander walked inside with trepidation, remembering all that had happened here. Spike entered, still silent. Dawn followed, staring at the stranger inhabiting her friend.  
  
"Ok," said Buffy, looking around. She pulled a sheet from where it had been pinned over a bookcase, "There are books."  
  
They stared at the books.  
  
"Uh, Buffy?" Dawn ventured, "How do we know what to look for?"  
  
Xander broke in, "Well I've been research guy before, Giles kept catalogues. We'll find the subject, and look at the books that have that subject in them."  
  
"What subject?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Well. . . what are we looking for?"  
  
"Maybe he had a catalogue for that too..."  
  
---  
  
Xander sat up from the pile of books before him. "I think it's this one," he said, pointing to a reference in the gloss on a hand written page, "And now to look it up."  
  
Buffy was asleep in her chair. Dawn was flipping intently through a modern wiccan encyclopedia, regarding auras. Spike was still silent, looking at Buffy where she rested her head on her arm, watching her breathe evenly and quietly as she slept. The morning light streamed diffuse through the blinds.  
  
He was gaining his bearings. He couldn't remember these places, these faces... but it was familiar. He felt comfortable among them. Like he could trust the beautiful blonde, who fought the darkness with such power. He hadn't said anything, if there was anything to say.  
  
He felt like he was alive for the very first time, like the universe was new again. And yet nothing was new. The creatures she had killed, the vampires, they didn't fill him with horror. He knew them.  
  
Their dynamic interested him. Buffy, the brave and beautiful one, she inspired love and loyalty. He could see it in Dawn, the young one's face, though there was also a kind of deep seated hurt and reticence. He could see it in Xander, who had found him.  
  
He liked Xander for a strange reason. He could tell that Xander had disliked whatever sort of man he had been before, and that he and this Spike had always held animosity for each other. He could just see it in Xander's actions, the way he spoke of him. And he liked him for it, because his loyalty to the beautiful one was such that Xander would help him simply because she wished it.  
  
And he could see Dawn cared about him. Just the way she carefully searched through the books told him that. But the way she avoided looking at him told him she was upset whoever he had been had left her. What had come back couldn't tell her why.  
  
And Buffy... he knew so much about her from her movements. The way she breathed, the soft tone of her voice. The gentle enunciation. Her strange name was music simply because it was hers. Her hazel eyes were noble.  
  
She had suffered much, and did not know her strength. He saw she was uncomfortable somehow, like something was missing in her life. He imagined there had been great loss, both recent and distant, in her existence. He had always been good at reading people, if not so good at talking to them.  
  
"Here it is! One book-o-answers coming up!" said Xander cheerfully, opening the copy flat on the table. Buffy stirred and awakened, stretching her back out with a grimace. Xander looked down at the book and his face fell.  
  
"Except that it's Greek to me," he said, looking at the strange turnings of the letters.  
  
"It is Greek," William said quietly, "I can read it."  
  
"Since when did you know... anything?" Xander asked flatly. But his face held the question sincerely.  
  
"I can read it," was all he replied. His tone was calm and patient, as he leaned over the book.  
  
"Could I have something to write on?" William asked, "I need to take notes." This was comforting. It was like what he'd done every day, he remembered... every day in the Bodeliean in his studies. It was a flash, a vivid memory. And then others came. His sister in a garden. Poetry. Sweetness.  
  
And then rejection, and dejection, and he was lost. That was his life, and it had ended a long time ago. Except that he had a chance to be alive again-- to be alive.  
  
Whoever he was was dead or buried, and now he could be alive.  
  
And he stilled his mind, and focused on translation. He could remember the skill with ease, and his pen began to flow across the notebook page.  
  
--- 


	3. Chapter Three

---  
  
part three  
  
---  
  
Xander had taken Dawn home hours ago, and Buffy had stayed with what was left of Spike. She felt responsible for him somehow, felt a strange lump of pity in her throat when she looked into his face.  
  
Poor William.  
  
He'd died young. She knew what it was like to be pulled into a place she didn't belong, against her will... she couldn't wish that on this man who seemed innocent of anything but an interest in old languages.  
  
She had kept her distance from him. As soon as he began working he was absorbed. She'd also noticed whenever she looked at him too closely he'd drop his eyes to the ground. Strange.  
  
Xander had wanted her to sleep, but she could not sleep. And she needed much less than he or Dawn realized. Even with the strength of the Slayer in her, her friends often saw her as fragile, a thing to be protected. In recent months, she'd felt fragile herself, like she could shatter in an instant and be lost.  
  
She had stayed away from the unlikely scholar, going to the workout room and losing herself in her training. But still the strange feeling of agitation filled her. Things were changing. What happened to Spike, she knew-- she knew in a way the others did not-- that it was of pivotal importance.  
  
Spike. She needed to take care of him now. Funny, that.  
  
When she had reached for his wrist, to take his pulse and see if he were alive, he had jumped and nearly knocked his book from the table. This was not a man used to being touched.  
  
And there had been no pulse. So, as afternoon turned to midday, she had gone out to get him what he needed.  
  
---  
  
"William," she said gently, as she opened the door again. She had returned with a parcel, had gone into the work room with it, and come out again. He looked up from his work, and stood to greet her.  
  
"Buffy."  
  
"I. . . have something for you," she said, uncertain of what how he would react.  
  
She placed the glass of blood on the table.  
  
"You know what--who you are," she said, "You need this to live."  
  
He stared at it. The reality of his new life sat before him, dark and red.  
  
She sat in the chair beside him, and he sank into his own seat.  
  
He was rapping his pen against the edge of his notebook unconsciously. The hand... she remembered how he'd touched her then, with such passionate urgency. Once. It seemed so long ago. And he couldn't remember.  
  
And now that hand so nervously tapped, and the mind-- the presence behind the movement, who was it before her? That which was there once was there no longer. She felt a strange ache of sadness at the thought.  
  
"I... I'm having trouble with the translation. It appears to be in code," he said, "It... it could be a while longer before we'll know how I came to be."  
  
"It doesn't matter," Buffy whispered kindly. Again, she noticed he couldn't hold his gaze on her for very long. He'd always look away.  
  
"I can remember some things now," he said, his voice shaking slightly, "I can remember sitting by the river in the countryside. There were swans, in the summers. My sister and I-- we used to play in the ruined abbey there."  
  
He was silent a moment, and she tried to imagine the scene he'd painted for her. Her thoughts mirrored his words when he continued.  
  
"How can we come to this from there?"  
  
"I don't know..."  
  
"I should continue my work," he said, leaving the glass untouched. He looked down on the old manuscript, and to the notebook that mapped the unattainable strains of its cryptic logic.  
  
--- 


	4. Chapter Four

---  
  
part four  
  
---  
  
He'd discovered nothing that day, but had brought his work home with him. She had left him with Dawn so she could make a quick patrol. Dawn hadn't wanted her to go.  
  
"Don't you want to stay? We could introduce Spike to moving pictures!" she said hopefully.  
  
"The forces of darkness not currently living in our house need to be battled, Dawn," Buffy responded, "You know that. And for goodness sake, don't show him Passions."  
  
She tried to sound lighthearted as she packed her gear, secreting a stake at her sleeve and a knife at her ankle, crossbow strapped to her back. But she knew what Dawn was really asking her-- pleading silently with her not to die.  
  
---  
  
She pinned the vampire against the brick wall of the alley. He smiled at her.  
  
"What? What is it? Do you like the pain?" she shouted, strangely angry at his smarmy smile.  
  
She punched him once. "Do you like it? Do you?"  
  
She threw him to the ground. The gravity of his situation seemed to settle into his eyes, but still the smile stayed defiantly in place.  
  
Dark memories filled her mind.  
  
He rolled to his side and to his feet. She ducked his blow and kicked him in the ribs. Even the cracking of the bone didn't perturb him, and he smiled still.  
  
She let her stake fall from her sleeve, into her hand. She smiled back.  
  
---  
  
William was sleeping lightly in her mother's bed. He dreamt of a softly blanketing snow. White and cool, all enveloping. Gentle, loving. Nothing had form beneath its benevolent embrace, but all was unique. He always dreamed of snowfall, soft and silent and cold. It meant something, perhaps transcendence, to him.  
  
Dawn crept upstairs slowly and looked through the doorway at the sleeping form. Spike was exhausted. She couldn't bring herself to call him anything but Spike-- he couldn't be gone. They thought he had left them, that someone new was here. But she thought it was him, if only he could remember it-- remember her.  
  
---  
  
She dispatched the smiling creature with a cool rage, and spun to discover three more advancing on her, and heard the sound of footfalls on the metallic roof of the warehouse above her.  
  
---  
  
But he couldn't-- wouldn't remember her. And it hurt her as she watched him, sleeping.  
  
---  
  
"Great," she said over the dust in the breeze, "All you vamps seem to bring your friends nowadays."  
  
She turned to face them, while listening intently to chart the progress of the feet above her.  
  
---  
  
And yet, Dawn was indescribably happy to see him, still. Perhaps more simply and truthfully so than anyone else.  
  
And she closed the door. It had been a long day. She would try to sleep, and strain in the darkness of her room for hours, trying to hear the door close and the jingle of keys that would signify her sister had made it through another night.  
  
---  
  
Buffy was tired. She had been awake for well over a day. She was stiff and felt her shoulder was slightly injured.  
  
It was nothing, though, just a bit of a strain. Nothing.  
  
But she couldn't go on fighting so many at once, all alone. She had a responsibility to those who loved her to stay alive.  
  
---  
  
She walked through the door, the jingle of her keys a delicate music in the house. A living room lamp was on. She closed the door and came inside.  
  
William sat on the couch, reading a book. He was engrossed.  
  
"What are you reading?" she asked.  
  
He looked up, caught off guard by her arrival.  
  
"I-- I thought that I'd wait for you. I woke some time ago."  
  
She looked at him. He was still nervous, uncomfortable. She understood that. When she looked at him, he looked down again at the floor.  
  
"Oh," he said, "It's Dostoevsky."  
  
"A sleep aid if there ever was one," Buffy quipped, smiling gently at him. She was surprised there was a copy in the house. Perhaps Tara had left it behind, or her mother.  
  
"No, it's really quite wonderful. He believed in things."  
  
"Things he knew were true."  
  
"Yes..."  
  
He had looked up in her face as he spoke, vehemently. For a moment she was reminded of his old manner of speaking, before. But that wasn't the man in front of her. And they were silent again.  
  
She sat down on the chair nearest the couch, just listening to the soft rustle of the turning pages. It was a comfortable sound. It reminded her of snow, when you walk through it. For once, she felt, through the tiredness of her limbs and the weight of her responsibility, a kind of distant, gentle peace. She curled up into the expanse of her armchair. Before too long, both had fallen into a quiet sleep in the warm yellow glow of the lamplight.  
  
--- 


	5. Chapter Five

---  
  
part five  
  
---  
  
Another night had come. Her life seemed a stream of nights wandering through the dark places. Graveyards, morose backstreets. The places the demons lived, where most humans would not interfere. But she would hunt them to their homes, track them where they walked. And her life sometimes seemed to just be a series of long nights, walking quietly through the dark, hunting.  
  
She had seen them earlier, and thought she had tracked them well. If she could find their den, she could take them by surprise near dawn, when they slept.  
  
It was a pack of demonic wolves, preternaturally intelligent. She could tell from their cries, the way they moved-- tactically, with a purpose. They communicated with each other.  
  
She had wounded one, its blood trailed down the asphalt where she walked. A muddy puddle betrayed a hauntingly large paw print. She bent to touch it. It engulfed her hand with its expanse.  
  
They were large of size and numbers. She would need to be prepared when she found them.  
  
She sighed, shifted her now-familiar crossbow on her shoulder. With the increase in activity, she'd needed a far range weapon nearly every night.  
  
Its weight was heavy on her back.  
  
---  
  
He was very close now, he knew, as he sat at the kitchen table, pouring over his research. He was alone in the house.  
  
He wrote, the sound of his pen moving a quiet rustle. His left hand was a black blur of ink, where he inadvertently dragged it across the page.  
  
He liked it here. It felt like a home.  
  
He continued to write, trying to think of the exact translation for the verb... no, he'd better look it up.  
  
He stood, looking across the table for the dictionary. He swayed, and caught the table edge.  
  
A burning sensation filled his temples, and grew in intensity. His joints were weak. And it subsided.  
  
He sat down again, shaking off the disturbance, book in hand.  
  
He turned it to the appropriate section. His vision blurred slightly. A subtle pain had settled into his veins. And he new what it was.  
  
But he could not, would not feed.  
  
He continued his studies, the dull pain spreading in him. It was almost a comfort, it felt right, somehow, that he should suffer.  
  
He was very close to finished. Just another key phrase and he'd be done.  
  
---  
  
Dawn waved goodbye to Janice, and picked her geometry book up off the car seat next to her.  
  
"Come over for milkshakes tomorrow?" Janice asked casually.  
  
"I don't think I can, there's some stuff going on here, I should really be home for a while." Dawn was embarrassed, things were so transparent. They probably thought social services was after her again. She was sure their eyes disapproved.  
  
"Ok, well you hang in there, Dawnie," said Janice's mom. She smiled. Sometimes she wondered, worried about the Summers girl. But not her place to pry.  
  
"Ok, I will. Bye Janice, thanks again!"  
  
"Sure," said Janice, picking something out from beneath her finger nails.  
  
She got out of the car, waved again and closed the door. And she walked down the familiar path to the front door as the headlights faded in their progress down the street.  
  
She closed the front door, and saw Spike sitting on the stairwell, staring at his hands.  
  
"Hey," she said kindly, "You want to play some cards with me?"  
  
He looked up, his eyes her red. She was struck by his expression, like raging despair. It frightened her.  
  
"Spike," she said, backing away unconsciously, "What's wrong?"  
  
"I'm not..." William whispered, his tone shaking, "I'm not real."  
  
"What...?"  
  
"I feel so real, the things I see... but I'm not real," he said, "How can I be here and not be real?"  
  
"Spike... William--"  
  
He stood up.  
  
"I thought I was somehow back again-- inhabiting the body, but back. But I'm dead, Dawn. I'm long passed away. This man I inhabit, he made me. A projection of memories, feelings. All the books agree. I'm an illusion."  
  
He began to pace through the living room. He felt the blood hunger like a slight sickness in his limbs. It would grow worse with time...  
  
She followed him with trepidation.  
  
"But it doesn't feel that way. I think I'm myself... I know it. But there it stands. I'm a projection of his mind, his consciousness made by him-- made *from* him."  
  
"It's ok..." she said, stepping towards him from the entryway.  
  
"No..."  
  
"It's best not to think about it," she whispered, remembering the psychiatric wards with their babbling inhabitants. A key, a girl. Nothing.  
  
"But how can I see her and want to do so much-- and not be real?"  
  
Dawn looked down. She was drawn to him in compassion.  
  
"It's ok. I'm not real either," she said gently, reaching out to touch his arm.  
  
"I was something else once, you see. Before all this. I was this green ball of energy. Until-- until someone else thought I should be a girl. And I was a girl. But I'm not really a girl at all... though-- though I feel like one-- People usually treat me like one. But it's always in the back of my mind."  
  
He looked at her, his face was gentler, calmer. He couldn't imagine her being anything but the kind, good creature before him.  
  
"Look, I can't go and meet the green swirly thing," she said, "But we can almost meet Spike... you can learn about him, just come with me."  
  
She took his hand and lead him towards the door.  
  
"I'm not sure if it'll be safe for us Dawn," William said, looking out into the night.  
  
"You'll protect me," Dawn said, walking into the night.  
  
--- 


	6. Chapter Six

---  
  
part six  
  
---  
  
The space was familiar, from the moment he was first aware. The stone, the carpets. He had lived in a crypt.  
  
"Well, here it is," Dawn said awkwardly, "He lived here."  
  
William looked around the place. It told him a great deal about himself, about the creature that had dwelled here.  
  
This was a creature who didn't want to live, so he made a home here, among bodies, dead and dry. It was spare, the man didn't indulge himself. He felt separate, apart from the world. He didn't have a place in it.  
  
He had aspired to much and failed miserably. Some of those failures seemed to have had serious physical effects. The charred marks on the stones of the lower level proved that.  
  
Perhaps he wasn't a very good man, but he wasn't a good monster either. The books, the recordings of music. Even a sketchpad on a desk, filled with drawings of the trees and funerary sculptures around the crypt. This was a creature that had wanted to be a man, tried to put on the trappings. It was almost ludicrous to see those trappings in the cold and spare expanse of the crypt.  
  
Perhaps that desire had created this new consciousness. A sort of second go at things.  
  
William felt sorry for this creature that was himself.  
  
Dawn had been silent for some time. He turned to her.  
  
"You miss him, don't you?" William asked Dawn, who was sitting on a sarcophagus, built into the wall on one side, drawing patterns in the dust. She didn't look up.  
  
"He used to stay with me, a while ago. He treated me like a person, more like an adult. But he stopped coming, and then he went away. But I thought he liked me-- I'm not sure..."  
  
"I'm sorry," said William quietly.  
  
"It's ok," Dawn said.  
  
---  
  
Buffy ran, fast. The trees of the forest spun past her vision in a tirade. She had tried to follow them to their den, wait until morning. But they had seen her, broken up and created a sort of pincer movement through the alleyways. It had been all she could do to get away, regroup. Now she had a plan.  
  
She continued to run. She knew they were behind her, even though she could not see them in the night. Occasionally, a growl of one to another could be heard in the dark distance.  
  
They stalked her swiftly, but the trap lay set. Xander would be ahead, she knew he would be ready. She trusted him.  
  
She had known the perfect place. She jumped over her own grave on the way.  
  
And then she scaled the walls of the cemetery, not far from that resting place.  
  
She ran past the trees, past the soft incline of a sloping hill. She caught sight of Xander, in the branches of a familiar tree. She spun and lifted her crossbow. It was time.  
  
She waited. She waited to give the signal. Xander would pull the mechanism he had constructed, the net would rise. And they would kill them all.  
  
She waited.  
  
And there was nothing.  
  
She swore.  
  
"I didn't lose them, I couldn't have, they were right there--"  
  
Xander looked down from his perch sympathetically, "You said you were going to keep them at a good distance. Maybe they lost your trail."  
  
"No, they could smell me-- they didn't have to see. They'd only break off if--"  
  
"If they smelled something better-- easier to kill."  
  
Buffy looked around, but there was no sign of civillians. She couldn't let anyone die because she led them right there-- it was typical. She couldn't do anything alone.  
  
"We have to find them," she said, "We have to find them now."  
  
---  
  
They streamed as one mind through the headstones, laying low. She was a threat to them and they still needed to feed. More trouble than she was worth.  
  
The large silver male tossed his head to the left, they turned left. The smell was fresh and clean, young and vulnerable. It was what they were made for.  
  
Two females with black pelts paused. Not left, no, that way was cold. It was stronger towards the back of the cemetery, towards the old and abandoned crypts.  
  
They had lost the hunter, evaded her obvious trap.  
  
They stalked to the appropriate door.  
  
---  
  
William and Dawn sat at the foot of the bed, silent. They didn't know what to say to each other, and simply took in the silence. After a long pause, Dawn sighed and stood up.  
  
"Did it help?" she asked, "To see this place?"  
  
"I don't know," he replied quietly, "I think I understand better, but I-- I don't know if it helps."  
  
She touched his hand gently, twining her fingers in his.  
  
"I understand."  
  
There was a loud crash above them.  
  
"What was that?" she asked, her grasp tightening around his fingers. Her heart sank in her chest.  
  
---  
  
His eyes darted around the room. This body knew something, sensed the feral movements from above. And it knew what to do.  
  
"This way Dawn-- be silent." He pulled her behind a bookshelf next to the stairwell. Soon he could see shapes at the top the stairs. They filed slowly down the stairs, sniffing the air, looking around the strange subterranean room.  
  
They waited. Dawn shifted against where he held her fast, gasped. Instinctually he caught the sound with his hand, cupping her mouth.  
  
They paused on the stairs, two abreast. There were six of them. They continued to scan the room, as if the pause were a part of a ritual, carried out by hunter and prey from the beginning of time.  
  
Then they moved. One darted its gaze through the books to where William stood. It coiled to spring.  
  
"Run!" William yelled, gesturing to the tunnel opening behind them. He pulled the bookshelf free in the same motion, and threw it at the stairs.  
  
He hadn't known the strength in this body.  
  
A rain of barking ensued, and Dawn stared, frozen in place like a doe. They wanted her.  
  
The six strained against the bookshelf, and one paw came down on a board and snapped it. There was no time. He grabbed Dawn's arm and dragged her into the blackness of the tunnels.  
  
--- 


	7. Chapter Seven

---  
  
part seven  
  
---  
  
William thought distantly that he should have felt overcome, but somehow desperation had cleared his mind. The darkness was complete around the stone arch through which they ran. Dawn could not see, but William's eyes were designed for the night, and he lead her by the arm.  
  
They could hear panting breaths and rustling motions behind them in the distance.  
  
"Here," said William, gesturing ahead to where the tunnel split off into two sections. Metal gridded gates hung open. They ran to the right and closed the grid. Water slicked the stones beneath them. It smelled of acrid mildew and stale air.  
  
"It won't stop them very long," Dawn said, "And we'll be lost in here."  
  
"We just have to keep moving," he responded.  
  
And they ran on.  
  
---  
  
Buffy and Xander walked in the darkness of the forest. She shook her head.  
  
"Xander, go home, I won't tell you again."  
  
"You're stuck with me. I absolutely can't take a hint."  
  
She stopped, turn to him. Her eyes were glazed with tears.  
  
"You'll die-- if they are waiting, and we aren't ready, I might not be able to protect you. Xander, you have to go, you have to--"  
  
"Hey it's my choice, and I'm not leaving you alone."  
  
His words were lost on her. She sat down on a log, put her head in her hands a moment and sighed.  
  
"They're not back here, and this is exactly where I lead them. Why can't I find them Xander? I need to be able to..."  
  
"Buff, calm down a moment. Breathe."  
  
"I have to do it, it's my responsibility and I screwed it up again."  
  
"It's done, we just need to move on, ok? Do what needs doing. Let's retrace our steps. We'll find them, give them the old fashioned arse kicking we all know and love, and there's no foul, right?"  
  
He pulled her to her feet, looking into the black distance before them.  
  
---  
  
The sound of crashing metal echoed through the still air.  
  
"Oh God," Dawn said. She felt a tear run down her cheek. She couldn't think of anything, and let him guide her, glad for the strength of his presence beside her.  
  
"This way," was all he responded. Somehow he felt removed, remote from the darkness around him, and yet focused on everything within that dark. The antiquated cobblestones, the still pools of water. The round, solemn openings to intersecting passages.  
  
They ran left into a smaller, intersecting passage. It opened again on another main vein. They ran right, and he pulled her again into another one of the small intersecting tunnels. For a moment, his vision blurred, the dull pain that had become constant flared. He shook his head, tried to clear it away. This wasn't the time.  
  
A sharp whine echoed in the distance. A musical response followed, and a harsh, guttural howl after that. He ignored the sounds, pulled her left. She gasped, holding back a sob.  
  
He felt a moment of pity for her fear.  
  
"This way, bit."  
  
"What?"  
  
"This way."  
  
---  
  
How did she miss it before? A deep depression in the earth of a freshly dug grave. The wide swath of soil marked by the passing of a pack.  
  
"They went that way," she said, pointing to the back of the cemetery.  
  
---  
  
"This way," he whispered. It was a litany. Dawn focused on the rhythm of his voice, as he pulled her through the pitch black. She tried to exclude anything else from her mind, forcefully ignoring the burning pain in her legs.  
  
The little world of stone and archways moved past his vision. Everything was the same, he could hardly imagine they had actually made any progress. Just the same tunnel, over and over again.  
  
Dawn was running blind, tripped over a loose stone, and he deftly caught her before she fell. And he saw something.  
  
Just initials, spray painted on a stone near the floor. The letters 'IG,' and a circle. There was something about them, he had seen them, wondered where they'd come from in the past.  
  
And he remembered where he was, and what he had planned for in this place.  
  
He stopped Dawn, pulled her in the opposite direction. He ignored the growing fire in his veins, the deep web of pain moving below his skin. He would not let that blood hunger control him.  
  
And they ran strait through the passage for a long while, then he suddenly pulled her to the right with a new purpose in his movements.  
  
---  
  
It was with a dull horror Buffy stood in the door to Spike's crypt, saw the mud tracked on the stones. Beyond, the broken bookshelf. Dawn's book bag, tossed carelessly aside.  
  
"Look Buffy, it's ok, we'll find her."  
  
"She brought him here..." she whispered, understanding. She suddenly felt lost, dizzy. But she couldn't lose her bearings, not now.  
  
"Come on," she said, standing with conviction, moving the shards of wood from the stairwell, heading for the tunnels.  
  
---  
  
They streamed together through the dark, following the trail. Each moment it grew stronger. Down the long, wide corridor they bolted, knowing they were close.  
  
They paused. Around them were a number of passageways. The silver male sniffed the opening to one. He could smell running water. The white male, the two black pelted females and the rest, they could smell it too, from all the passages. They converged. They could surround their prey, and knew this was they way it had run.  
  
With a simple motion, they all looked at each other, and then at the tunnels. And they separated, and ran.  
  
---  
  
William waited, and knew he didn't have long to wait. The air was fresh and cool here, where the tunnels converged together. There were grates at the ceiling, through which dark patches of sky were visible. Water flowed in a gentle current across the floor, a few inches deep.  
  
The creatures were new to this place, but he knew it, and the advantage was all he had. Dawn waited behind him, versed in what she should do. She was worried for him, knew he had planned this so that, should he not survive, she might have a chance to escape before they pursued her. She solemnly closed her eyes a moment, and inhaled deeply in the thick silence.  
  
He had been nervous, he might not have remembered correctly. But the wires were in place. He checked the stone in the wall. Five from the bottom, three from the left of the tenth support. For a moment, he hesitated. He might be wrong. The blood hunger might be turning his brain, making him remember what he did not. But it was loose. He removed the revolver from behind it. It felt familiar to his hand.  
  
He stood in the center of the passage. In front of him was a semi-circle of black, circular openings. Beyond these, the passage narrowed, and there he stood, waiting. And then, a soft wimper, a bark. He felt a dull tingling in his veins, anticipation. He knew this. He knew this well.  
  
He had only turned back to face the tunnels when the shapes, perfectly timed, emerged from them as one moving force. They paused a moment, focusing on the man before them, standing, calmly waiting. They were silent as they leapt forward in one motion, springing ahead with all their force. The water splashed up white around them.  
  
And he pulled the tripwire that lowered the grate. And then he bolted forward, and they bolted with him. Dawn lowered the second and it fell in place behind him, knocking a wolf back with its force, crushing another under its iron weight. The others immediately began to push with their snouts against the bottom of the grating, lifting it where the body held it above the floor.  
  
One had made it through, and landed with him, its claws on his back. He felt it tear the flesh. And he let go. The pain in his veins drove him forward, buried his hands in its chest, tearing.  
  
He turned, rolled with it, tore with it. It was a sharp and exquisite pain.  
  
He snarled, he could feel the blood all around him in pools, flowing in the gentle current. The wolf's, his own, and still he tore into it with bear teeth and hands. It could not kill him in the way it sought.  
  
And he rolled to the top, could not hear Dawn cry out to him, seized the loose stone from the ground and crushed the life from the beast below him.  
  
He could not see the extent of his injury. He stood, enveloped in the instinctual rage. He took the pistol from where it lay, raised it, and fired into the barking mass before him, hitting his targets where they leapt and snarled.  
  
He blacked out a moment, swayed with an ominous pain.  
  
And he could see again. The cool air flowed gently around him, the water's moving was a soft music in the night.  
  
He was covered in blood, his face, his hands. There was a dark mass of matted fur before him. He saw what he had done as he collapsed to his knees. Dawn rushed up to his side.  
  
"Spike!" she cried.  
  
"My God..." he whispered, softly.  
  
--- 


	8. Chapter Eight

---  
  
part eight  
  
---  
  
He sat again on the floor of the bedroom. It was nearing dawn. He turned to look out, through the curtains, where the sky was growing bluer. The window was open, and he could smell gardenias on the wind. He winced in pain. But the physical hurt simply served as a distraction to the thoughts and memories flowing through him. Bloodlust in Spike's past, its infinite instances, and the desperate moment he had experienced it in himself.  
  
Gardenias. They were round and white, like snow. He had always dreamt of snow. White, pervasive. They both had. He could remember it.  
  
---  
  
Buffy sat at the kitchen table, exhausted in mind and spirit. They hadn't gone far in the tunnels before Dawn and William met them. She was supporting his weight, her clothes matted with blood from his wounds. Her eyes were very tired.  
  
And he-- he stared through her, away from her. He still avoided contact with her eyes, but now it seemed not wrought from nervousness, but a shamed despair.  
  
Poor William.  
  
It was later, on the way home, when he almost fell, that she began to understand. Xander had caught him, and had been helping him walk. He had said something, at first she thought it was a delusion.  
  
"He's coming back, I can tell..." he whispered softly, "My time is running out."  
  
Xander stood next to her in the kitchen. He was putting on his coat, watching her reverie.  
  
"He doesn't even get to live three days," she whispered.  
  
"I know," said Xander quietly.  
  
"I failed everyone tonight. He shouldn't have had to face that."  
  
"He took care of himself pretty well."  
  
"Yeah, but if I only had three days, I don't think I'd want to have faced the questions he has to be thinking of up there," she said, gesturing to the ceiling, and the bedroom above it.  
  
Xander turned, touched her shoulder, "But it's what he had. Sure, it sucked. But it was what he had."  
  
They were silent a moment, and then Xander continued.  
  
"And sometimes, sometimes that's just the way things are. Maybe we'll never know why. And that's all there is."  
  
She nodded. He began to walk away. But then he came back, and hugged her warmly. She clung to her friend a moment, a lump forming in her throat.  
  
"I was wrong," he said, "That's not all there is. Don't give up, Buff."  
  
And he walked out, the screen door clattering behind him.  
  
---  
  
Buffy climbed the stairs slowly. She didn't know what to say to him, but didn't want him to fade away without talking with him one last time.  
  
She met Dawn at the top of the stairs, where she had been watching him through the door. She closed it gently, and turned to her sister. There were tears in her eyes.  
  
"He seems lost," she said, "Like all he can feel is pain-- because-- well, this isn't where he belongs, or the way he should exist."  
  
"But that's the way things are," Buffy said sadly, remember her past, "You can't change the things that others choose for you."  
  
"It just doesn't seem fair," Dawn said. She couldn't control them, and her throat closed, and the tears ran down her face, the sad thrill of sobs rising in her chest. For some reason, she remembered all the nights she'd waited for her sister, hoping she'd come home alive.  
  
"It's not fair," Buffy said gently. Dawn clung to her.  
  
"I love you," she said simply, "And I'm sorry for all that's happened."  
  
Buffy held her sister a moment, a wave of calm running through her. She brushed the hair from Dawn's face, smiled at her softly.  
  
"Go to bed for now, Dawn. I'll be here in the morning."  
  
And she opened the door to her dead mother's room, and went in to talk to him.  
  
--- 


	9. Chapter Nine

---  
  
part nine  
  
---  
  
"Hey," she said simply. The dawn light was flowing in soft blue shafts through the curtains. The room was ethereal in the early morning blueness. The smell of mist through the open window, the sound of early birds all promised a bright and warm day to follow.  
  
He didn't respond, simply sat in the corner, away from the light. She drew the curtains, and the diffused light made patterns on her face.  
  
He turned away from her, winced. He was no longer bleeding, and Dawn had helped him clean his wounds. But the damage remained.  
  
"It's ok..." she said, crouching beside him. She felt a strange affection for him then, her heart moved with it as she looked at the tears in his eyes, the bruises spreading from the gashes on his back, the side of his face. He stared at the repeating patterns of the wallpaper. She stared with him. And there was quiet for a time.  
  
"It's strange," he whispered at length, "But for everything, I wish I could survive this, exist here. Even-- even if it isn't real, even if it's an illusion."  
  
"Well, maybe it's not an illusion-- not if you felt it like it was real, experienced it all with me and Dawn and Xander. It's terrible you didn't get a choice... I understand."  
  
He shook his head slightly, inclined it to her. His voice shook as he spoke.  
  
"I was covered in blood. I can understand why he ran from it, created me. I'm a killer, and even as I stand, I'm still a killer... I can't tell you what it was like..."  
  
She swallowed, sat a moment, unsure if she should speak.  
  
"That's ok... you're like me," she said. It hadn't seemed real until she said it, she hadn't believed it until it filled the air around her in her voice.  
  
He looked at her, the soft blue light around her, playing through her hair in delicate patterns.  
  
"I'm a killer, too-- just like you are. But that isn't all I am. It's what I do with that strength, with that instinct-- that's what matters. And it matters what I do with the rest, the part that doesn't know how to kill."  
  
She felt tears at the corners of her own eyes as she continued.  
  
"We're alike-- just alike. And it's ok." She reached out and brushed a stubborn curl back behind his ear.  
  
"Buffy," he said, "I can feel it, it's hard to describe, but I can. I'm changing, soon I'll be gone."  
  
"I know," she said softly, "I'll remember... it's ok."  
  
Suddenly he cocked his head to the side, looked at her a moment straight in the face.  
  
"Buffy... we buried you, didn't we?" he said, surprised, remembering.  
  
"Yeah... you did."  
  
And he dropped his eyes again.  
  
She looked at him intensely, his hands, his shoulders. The line of his jaw. She felt pity, yes, but also a warm affection, a physical connection with the body he inhabited. He didn't know about that, and yet still that connection remained. A tear ran down her face unheeded.  
  
It was time she left him, to fade away in peace. She knew Spike would want it that way. He wouldn't want to wake up and have to face her.  
  
Before she stood, she leaned close to him and kissed him tenderly.  
  
And then she rose to leave, turned, walked halfway to the door.  
  
"Buffy," he said, his eyes wide and earnest, "I would follow you until the end of the world."  
  
She swallowed, remembered his promise on the stairs, long ago, when everything seemed lost.  
  
"I know," she said simply, and left him alone, a soft breeze blowing through the curtains.  
  
Sometime after that, he must have slipped out of the house quietly. He was gone when she returned.  
  
--- 


	10. Chapter Ten: Epilogue

---  
  
part ten  
  
---  
  
Buffy walked through the familiar streets, the sun on her face. She wore a long yellow dress, with pale flowers clustering along its soft, cotton surface.  
  
It was a hot summer afternoon. Things had been quiet, strange since that day.  
  
He hadn't come to see her, hadn't been at the Bronze, hadn't appeared while she patrolled.  
  
But she knew he was working, unseen. The numbers were still high-- higher than they had ever been before the summer. But she could handle it, and noticed the difference that he'd made. And yet she did not see him, and he did not come to her.  
  
She crossed the street, the heat from the pavement warm against her ankles.  
  
She walked into the cemetery, through the familiar grey stones. It seemed different-- a peaceful place in the daylight. Not a hunting ground, but a resting place. She heard a bird crying out in the trees as she walked calmly down the empty path.  
  
---  
  
He was sitting on a carved sarcophagus, his back resting against where it joined with the wall. He was holding a guitar, playing it softly. No particular melody, just what came to mind, streaming up and down the registers with his thoughts.  
  
He hadn't known what to do. Strange he could remember it all-- being the man. He could remember thinking his thoughts, feeling his emotions-- and that person had not been able remember him, what he was before.  
  
Things seemed different, but he didn't know the shape of that change-- something was different, in the world around him, what he saw. The colors were different.  
  
And he sat in the crypt, the warm air blowing in like a draft.  
  
And the door opened. She was there. He didn't look up.  
  
He continued to play, softly, and bit his lip unconsciously. He had utterly no idea what to say to her, how to change things.  
  
And she looked at him. He seemed better, healed. Only a slight hint of a wound on his cheek. But it was more than that.  
  
She didn't know what to say to him, and instead, walked around the crypt in a semi-circle, looking at the armchair, at the lamps and candles. And she came to a row of cardboard boxes filled with books, rescued from a ruined bookcase.  
  
She removed a book. It was by Dostoevsky. And she walked up to him, and she didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say.  
  
And she sat down, beside the sarcophagus, and opened the book, flipping through the pages, settling to the end, looking at the print, the words moving past her.  
  
"Can her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations, at least," one line read.  
  
She paused a moment, listened to the strange and quiet music above her. And she turned to the beginning, began to read, comfortable in the quiet warmth.  
  
He did not look up, but he felt her presence, and smiled at her, softly.  
  
---  
  
"He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering.  
  
But that is the beginning of a new story-- the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiaiton into a new unkown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended."  
  
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishement.  
  
---  
  
the end. 


End file.
